Stunning Ford Capri with just one previous owner kept in garage for 36 years… before being sold at auction
A FORD Capri was stored away in a garage for nearly 40 years before going under the hammer at auction.
The 1984 Capri MK3 1.6-litre has only picked up 36,000 miles on the clock having spent most of its life sat in a Buckinghamshire garage.
The motor had been locked away gathering dust since 1987.
It only saw daylight for a few hours in 2016 when the owner, who couldn’t drive sent it off for an MOT.
It passed on only needing a set of tyres and exhaust.
Despite that though, it went straight back into storage and it only came out again when the owner died.
The car then went up for auction with Hansons Classic in its original condition in September this year with a guide price of £10-12,000 and was featured on their YouTube channel.
The car was registered on January 11, 1984 to a Jeff Sutton although he died the following year and it passed on to his wife who couldn’t drive.
Over the following two years it was used occasionally by relatives but ended up permanently in the garage in 1987.
Hansons Classsic said: “It’s a time warp. It’s a unicorn. It starts, it runs and drives.”
The MK3 Capri started life in the design phase in 1976 and was known affectively as project Carla.
Although, hampered by a tight budget, it ended up being little more than a cosmetic face-lifted version of the MK2.
Effectively, all that was updated was a set of re-designed quad headlights, a pair of new wings, a new bonnet, fresh bumpers and updated paint/interior options.
In total, Ford ended up spending around £480,000 on the development of the third generation Capri.
In comparison, Ford splashed out £20million in development for the first generation model.
To make the MK3 stand out a bit of conscious trickery was used, with the chrome bumpers on the MK2 and exterior trim given a contemporary satin black look and using existing tooling to create the MK3’s trademark “hooded” bonnet.